from the ownership-society dept

We've written many, many words on the ridiculousness of publicity rights, and how they're frequently abused to stifle perfectly reasonable activities. But this latest example really takes it up a notch. The owner of a horse in the UK is apparently demanding some of the prize a man won in a "selfie" contest, because the horse made a key "photobombing" appearance in the background, that likely contributed to the victory:

That photo was taken by the 3 year old kid in the picture, Jacob Bellis, and that's his father, David, holding him. Nice photo! The horse in the background is named Betty, and is owned by Nicola Mitchell, who sounds like a person who perhaps needs to calm down a bit. From The Guardian:

Mitchell said: “I was really annoyed to hear he had won a £2,000 holiday and had used a picture of our horse without our permission. He should have asked for our consent. There should be some token gesture as it is our horse that has really won them the holiday,” she said.

Mitchell added: “I didn’t even know that this competition was on. If I had known about it we would have entered and could have won as Betty is always sticking out her tongue.”

There's plenty to comment on here. First, as you can see, the reward was a holiday trip, and not cash, though apparently there was some confusion over that. So it's not like it's easy to "split." Apparently Mitchell first demanded "half" of the prize. Second, (and importantly) you don't need permission to photograph someone's horse, especially when done from a public path. So the whole "without our permission" thing is complete nonsense. A token gesture might be a nice thing to do, but it's not clear the best way to seek a "token gesture" is to angrily demand half of the prize. Perhaps a friendlier "Hey, that's my horse, and that's awesome!" would have been a better approach that would have made everyone happy, leading the Bellises to think about maybe giving something nice in return. Like, a treat for the horse or something.

Finally, the whole "If I had known about it we would have entered and could have won" bullshit, the response is but you didn't. So stop whining. Perhaps next time such a contest is run you'll be paying attention and you can answer. The whole response smacks of serious sour grapes.

Thankfully, the Guardian quotes a lawyer who agrees that Mitchell has no legal basis to complain. Of course, not too long ago, we thought the same thing about a monkey in a selfie, and then... PETA stepped in. So far its attempt to extend copyright law to monkeys has flopped, but perhaps its next attempt will be extending publicity rights to horses. I imagine that will fare similarly poorly.

from the real-or-imagined dept

A month ago, the EU brought down the antitrust hammer on Google -- with somewhat suspicious timing. As we noted, the move by EU regulators to claim that Google violated antitrust laws came the very same day that the EU's digital commissioner, Gunther Oettinger announced that the EU should more heavily regulate American internet companies to help European competitors get a leg up against them:

The European Union should regulate Internet platforms in a way that allows a new generation of European operators to overtake the dominant U.S. players, the bloc’s digital czar said, in an unusually blunt assessment of the risks that U.S. Web giants are viewed as posing to the continent’s industrial heartland.

Speaking at a major industrial fair in Hannover, Germany, the EU’s digital commissioner, Gunther Oettinger, said Europe’s online businesses were “dependent on a few non-EU players world-wide” because the region had “missed many opportunities” in the development of online platforms.

Mr. Oettinger spoke of the need to “replace today’s Web search engines, operating systems and social networks” without naming any companies.

To be clear, Facebook doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to handling privacy issues of its users. The company has a history of changing its privacy policies with little notice, sometimes in ways that appear to unilaterally shift the privacy settings on certain information. Frankly, much of this was a result of Facebook needing to shift from what was an almost entirely closed network to one that was much more public and open -- which was a key to the site becoming so successful. Frankly, while some of the criticism is well deserved, and Facebook's bull-in-a-china-shop approach to privacy in its earlier days was pretty startling, of late the company has appeared to be much better about things. And many of the earlier concerns proved to be almost entirely overblown by people misrepresenting things or taking things completely out of context.

That isn't to claim that Facebook is good for user privacy -- but the supposed fears about Facebook and privacy seem overblown. Yes, Facebook is super popular, but it's still a voluntary system that you can choose to use or not. If you really don't like the company, it's not hard to not use it and to block it from tracking you on various other sites. But that won't stop Europe from using fears over privacy as a wedge to attack the company:

Regulators in Europe, however, are especially focused on how the company collects and handles those users’ data. The region has some of the world’s toughest data protection rules, and policy makers from France, Germany and Belgium are investigating whether Facebook broke Europe’s laws after the company announced a new privacy policy this year.

If found to have breached the privacy rules, Facebook may face fines or demands that it change how the company handles people’s data, though the company says it complies with the region’s data protection laws.

Meanwhile, European regulators are also looking to regulate how Facebook's messaging systems work:

Yet lawmakers are now looking into whether Facebook’s messaging services should be regulated like those offered by traditional carriers. And industry executives say that as the social network starts to offer other services like phone calls through the company’s many smartphone applications, Facebook should play by the same rules that now apply to traditional mobile operators.

It will be worth watching closely to see what regulators come up with. It is, of course, entirely possible that these internet companies really are doing bad things that should require regulators to step in. But, to date, there's been a lot of puffed up smoke, rather than any actual fire. And it really seems like the interest from EU regulators has more to do with the fact that these companies are (1) big and successful and (2) American rather than European.

from the jealousy-isn't-a-business-model dept

We've already written about the rather ridiculous campaign by actors to make sure they get a cut of every time their work is used. As we pointed out, the various entertainment companies have no one to blame but themselves for this state of affairs -- as they're the ones who have made the same claim in pushing to get paid for every use of their content. However, the more people all demanding their slice of the pie, the more difficult it gets for these companies to really embrace new business models. Now, we have the NY Times playing along with the actors claims, presenting an absolutely ridiculous and extreme "example." It takes on the cause of the voice talent performing as the lead character in Grand Theft Auto IV, Niko. The actor in question made $100,000 for his voice work and motion capture work, which took parts of 15 months. That seems like a rather reasonable fee -- and, clearly, it was reasonable to Michael Hollick, or else he wouldn't have taken the job. And, of course, if he demanded more, it's likely that Rockstar would have moved on and found another perfectly capable and willing actor to do the work for $100,000.

Yet, thanks to news reports that note that the game has raked in $600 million, Hollick is being put forth as an example of those poor actors not getting "their cut" of work they do in video games. This is after-the-fact arguing. Hollick had a deal that was worthwhile. It's only after the fact, based on the lofty sales numbers being bandied about that it makes for a good "story" to suggest that he was somehow underpaid. It's surprising that the NY Times would even play up that side of the story when even Hollick himself admits that the $1,050 per day fee he received was 50% higher than the union's negotiated rate. In other words, he was paid a premium for the work, making over $1,000/day (hardly a pauper's salary), got a ton of publicity for his work in the role... and only after the fact complains about the salary based on the overall revenue the game brought in, and the NY Times puts out an article with a headline suggesting he was underpaid.